u89music file

U-89 B Flat Major  U-89 in midi

Musar of Reb Israel Salanter

The world view of Musar is really radical and simple. That good traits [note 1] are what really matters.
[Not that everyone that learns Musar is a decent person. I think my own parents were about the best thing I ever saw in terms of personal traits.  We attended Temple Israel [Reform] so we were not really into learning Musar. But the fact is my parents knew well that Torah is about good traits. I assume they got that from their parents.

But there is the "spirit of Torah" that I found in NY Litvak yeshivas that I did not feel as a part of Reform Judaism That being said Reform Jews are in general a lot better when it comes to the aspect of Torah that relate to obligations "between man and his fellow man."


And sometimes Musar can provide some ideological excuse. Although Musar is important, the proof is in the pudding   --good traits are what matters, not the learning about good traits.
I also went to the Boy Scouts, and there also was an emphasis on traits and self improvement.

At any rate, the message about good traits and fear of God I saw in Musar so much that at some point I got the message that: that is what "it's all about." That is, one's portion in the next world, and also in this world. Further, that holding on to good traits tends to create a force field around one-imperfect but still a kind of protection.
You might not think of Dante as an authority about Gehinom [Hell],-- but his opinion is also that the people in Hell did not have good traits.


[note 1] This is called "midot tovot". Not to lie, or steal. There are more details but that is the basic idea. Musar  goes into the details, not just in the mediaeval books, but also the Musar books that were written by the disciples of Reb Israel Salanter. The books of Reb Israel helped me to get a clear idea of what Torah is all about even more than the classical books of Musar.

Since the Lithuanian Yeshiva world is as difficult to figure out as much as politics and since politics is nowhere near being an exact science, therefore it makes no sense to analyse it but rather to identify the particulars places that are worthy of support and emulation. Regardless of what ever the reason for their excellence might be.

The well known Ivy League is obviously Ponoviz in Bnei Brak and the Litvak yeshivas in NY.
But what makes them great seems to be for me an impossible question to answer.


The Litvak Yeshiva = Straight Torah. And that is the main thing which makes this kind of institution unique and important.

Litvak yeshivas

Even though people do not look on Litvak yeshivas as hippe communes they do have something in common. A kind of attempt to escape from the world and to build a private Utopia.
The flaw in the system is that it is not self contained.

There is unquestionably an aspect of utopia in the whole thing. And when it works--it works well.
And when things are going OK, you never have any reason to doubt that this is the "true path."
It is like me and my stomach. I never noticed how my digestive system is working, until  something went haywire. Same in the Litvak yeshiva world. There are plenty of good reasons to say that it in fact is about as close to utopia in this world than one can get. One learns and follows objective morality and is able to ignore the awful horrifying secular world.
The reason I am asking about it is for the cases when it does not seem to work--like for me. I am no where near being able to do an analysis on this but it begs to be done.
It is like political theory. When a state seems to be abusing people, the tendency is to attack theories that support the state. When on the other hand chaos and crime reign, one looks for justification of the State. 

What I mean is the Litvak yeshiva context was very nice for me for a while, but at some point something seems to have gone off course. And I can have no idea how to account for that.  

u87 u88 u89 music files

U-87 G Major [U-87 in midi] [u-87 nwc]This I converted from MIDI to MP3 by Zamzar which is very different than the google converter. So I deleted a lot of the parts besides the main line and bass. This is based on the fact that in this converter the other parts do not seem to work very well. [here is u-8 in midi format.] u8 nwc  u8 mp3
U-88  [u-88 midi format

u88 in nwc

U-89 B flat major [u-89 midi format\ [u89 nwc]

What I have noticed in Physics and Math is that sometimes there is a key concept that everything revolves upon. I had forgotten all math for a long time and only took it up in Israel after I became convinced that it is not separate from Torah but a part of God's Law.
At the time I bought a small book that had  basic concepts of Math. On one page was the idea of of a tangent function laid out simply. To my surprise, I understood it [only after review]. Then in Hebrew University, someone showed me the basic idea of how to solve an algebraic equation, and [the same person] later the basic idea of a derivative.
Over time, I began to see that for me there were certain points of leverage or focus that made everything else clear.
It might be different according to the person. But for me, I found it useful to identify key points, and review them.


I also think that often a lot depends on finding the right book.
Furthermore, the idea of "Girsa" [saying the words in order and go on--as fast as possible] I think is important in the way it is first introduced in tractate Sabbath [I think around page 63]. ליגמור והדר ליסבר "to finish, and then to understand" [delve into it deeply].

What is Torah all about?

There seem to be  lot of opinions about "What Torah is all about." The Musar opinion of Isaac Blazer [good traits and fear of God] is not the only one. There is Abraham Isaiah  [author of the חזון איש] that the main thing is to be careful about law. The commentary on the beginning of Mishne Torah of the Rambam holds the main thing is to come to the higher awe of God. The Ran of Breslov held it is שמירת הברית [sexual sanctity]. The Torah itself puts a lot of emphasis on coming and staying in Israel in Deuteronomy פרשת היראה.

I think the higher awe of God is certainly among the major goals of Torah. But I can also see that Rav Isaac Balzer was right because I see  most of the books of the great sages of the Middle Ages and also the Reshash [Rav Shalom Sharabi] seconded his motion.

The opinion that the ultimate purpose of Torah is to come to awe of God has an important practical application. For if one merits to this awe of God, he might be tempted to push it off by ignorence of its value. So simply being aware of this idea is important.



The approach of the Gra and his disciple Reb Haim of Voloshin  is that the major way of coming to Oneness with God and Awe of him is by learning Torah. This idea is in fact mentioned openly in the Yerushalmi Gemara in Peah.כל חפציך לא ישוו בה. כל חפצים לא ישוו בה אפילו חפצי שמיים אינם שווים לדיבור אחד של תורה All the commandments are equal to even one word of learning Torah.
[This idea of the Gra I think is quite right.]]